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“Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure” Philippians 2:12-13.
If you are growing in Christ-like sanctification, who does the work, you or God? Yes. God works in us and with us, but He will not work without us. God, by His Holy Spirit, makes us holy. He gives us a new “want to.” He changes us from the inside out and we begin to desire what God commands.
“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” Ephesians 2:10. We do good works, we respond to the exhortations of the Scriptures, and as we do so, we reveal God’s workmanship – He has prepared us beforehand for such good works.
So, sanctification is God’s work in us, and with us – we cooperate with his work in us. A sailboat is a good illustration of this. When you take your boat out on the water and hoist the sails, do the sails propel you through the water? No, the wind does. The wind hits the sails, the sails that have been hoisted! You will not go anywhere without the sails up and biting into the wind. So, we must lift our sails. We must do the things that God commands in his word, we must act on the exhortations of scripture to be holy, to be perfect, to forgive one another, to love one another – and with those sails reaching for the skies, the Holy Spirit will push us on down the river of sanctification.
So, let’s go sailing. God is our captain so let us hoist our sails.